


the fact of a pulse

by Jagged



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Violence, chronology is for losers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 05:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jagged/pseuds/Jagged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rule number one, he says: anything goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fact of a pulse

**Author's Note:**

> Kindasorta a Fight Club AU, for a prompt at the [90s comment ficathon](http://magisterequitum.livejournal.com/517964.html) @ LJ.

_Hit me again_ , you say, and he does. Your glasses crack under his fist and when you pick yourself up the floor there’s blood on the tiles, blood in your mouth, red like your eyes.  
  
You go to work and people stare at the bruises and you don’t try very hard at all to care.  
  
-  
  
 _Rule number one_ , he says: _anything goes_.  
  
-  
  
He’s your brother, except for all the ways he isn’t. He disappears for days at a time and then strolls into your room like nothing happened. Once or twice he comes back bleeding and satisfied, and there’s music booming inside the thin walls, a thrumming bass that follows you throughout the day.  
  
Came to you while you were drowning in the monotone grey of a life drained of blood and put a sword in your hand, let you swipe at him and then knocked it away. He slammed you into the floor and then he told you to get back up, and you told him _I hate you_ but pulled yourself back on your feet, reached for the blade, fought through the red rising over your mind and felt as though you’d been born again.  
  
-  
  
 _Rule number two:_ anything _goes._  
  
-  
  
The first time you beat him he pushes you against the bricks in a dirty alley somewhere on the way home and when you lunge for his mouth it’s the first time you’ve heard him laugh. You kiss like you fight and the taste is the same, the heat too. You pull apart and when he raises his hand you brace yourself, but nothing could ever have prepared you for the way he straightens your shades, his face blank and his fingers so close to your face, an echo of tenderness.  
  
It was the two of you at first, just beating the shit out of each other, but then people started trickling in. Faces shadowed and just the white of their eyes showing sometimes, and your brother takes them all on, stands in the middle of the room like he’s alone in the world with not a care. When he talks silence falls like a wave and you’re left by the side choking on the heat. Sometimes you feel his hand on your shoulder, but only to push you to the ring, and you go, and you _win_.  
  
-  
  
Worry looks terrible on Rose.  She sighs when you tell her. You don’t have to fake normalcy around her, but everything still comes stilted, worried. Broken.

_You’re trying to be too many people at once_ , she says, fingers steepled and eyes intent, and you raise a brow at her because that’s BS. You tell her that and she graciously gets the hint and drops the subject.

In the night you can hear the music prowling under the floorboards and when you look up he’s leaning against the doorway like he was there all along.

_You should listen to your sister_ , he says. You are painfully aware of exactly how much space lies between him and you.

The music howls, and you kiss your brother because it hurts less than thinking about how he might be right.  
  
-  
  
He takes you  upstairs beaten and bloody and there’s a fire roaring outside. It rises from further down the street and it leaps across shitty alleys to eat at cheap-ass buildings that should long ago have been left to the rats and the gulls. There’s a beat inside your head that sounds like his but when you look up he hasn’t moved. He’s left his sword somewhere at some point and now it’s just him, it’s just you.

_You could be so much _better__ , he says. It’s not even disgust in his voice, not even weariness or frustration. He sounds flatter than a pancake that’s been run over by a steamroller and about as sickening to swallow, so you don’t, so you turn your back to him and the brightness of the light over his shades reflected across the room, you watch it burn and you try to figure out if you want to laugh or if you want to cry.

You love your brother. You have never before bled over this floor. Everything will eventually be okay.

One of those sentences is not a lie.


End file.
